With the sun shining brightly this morning, I decided to show my wife around some of the landmarks in Heathrow Villages

With the ongoing fight against the new runway and the rubbish and pothole issues that are frequently highlighted by our representatives in The Villages, it is good to highlight some of the positive aspects of life in the area and to take some time to look around the sites of historic interest that Heathrow Expansion would blight

The Great Barn, Harmondsworth

Referred to as ‘The Cathedral of Middlesex’, the Barn was constructed in the 16th century and was still a working building up until the late 1970’s.

Restored by English Heritage in conjunction with The Friends of the Great Barn, it was re-opened to the public in April and can now be viewed on the second and fourth Sunday of each month between April and October.

Situated behind the historic St Mary’s Church, my wife and I were treated to a tour by local expert Justine Bayley, who pointed out a number of facts about both the building and it’s reconstruction that highlighted the level of craftsmanship that has enabled the structure to survive for centuries with hopefully many more to come.

Just around the corner from The Great Barn is the relatively recent memorial to the famous inventor Barnes Wallis, who developed the revolutionary ‘bouncing bomb’ that RAF Lancasters of 617 squadron used to destroy the Ruhr dams in 1943. The leader of the raid, Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC, was one of my boyhood heroes so it was good to see the architect of the raid remembered in this way. Barnes Wallis had previously designed the Wellington bomber, the mainstay of RAF Bomber Command in the early years of World War 2 and went on to play a key role in the development of the Tallboy and Grand Slam weapons that were used to sink the battleship Tirpitz and wreck well fortified underground weapons factories in Germany respectively.

The immaculate state of the memorial is a tribute to local resident Armelle Thomas, who was instrumental in its construction and spends time making sure it is always well kept.

Cranford Park

Cranford Park is a haven for wildlife and one of the prettiest walks in Hillingdon. Amongst the numerous plant and insect life, the park is also home to such birds as the Skylark, Meadow Pipit and Nuthatch along with birds of prey such as the Kestrel and Sparrowhawk.

We kept to the pathways whilst visiting in order to not disturb the nests of the Skylarks, which they build on the ground and are very busy at this time of year.

A number of them were noticeable in the air with their distinctive calls, drowned out only by the noise of the Greater Airbus and Boeing that were in evidence on the flightpath in to Heathrow on a regular basis!

Heathrow Villages have been local communities for centuries, with settlements at the ground where the park now sits dating back to The Bronze Age. Seeing the beauty and the history today makes me more convinced than ever that a Third Runway at Heathrow must be stopped to preserve the area for many generations yet to come.

The following is a response from UKIP Culture spokesman Peter Whittle to Bill Oddie’s comments about British families

UKIP Culture Spokesman Peter Whittle said: “Bill Oddie’s remarks this weekend, in which he described his shame at being British, and that the size of British families need ‘to be contained’ in the face of over population, were odious and misinformed.

“If they had been made about any other country or its people, he would almost certainly be facing the sack.

“The TV personality, whose salary as presenter of the BBC’s SpringWatch, is effectively paid by British taxpayers, talked of the British as being a ‘horrible race’.

“Such bigoted comments reveal a very distorted view and a complete ignorance of the facts. British families, like their counterparts in Europe, are on average small; indeed the indigenous populations of most European countries have been in steady decline for some time.

“In fact, the current and ongoing population boom in Britain is driven overwhelmingly by mass immigration.

“It might be easy to dismiss Mr Oddie’s remarks were in not for the fact that they are unfortunately typical of an attitude which has been unduly influential in British society for far too long. An unquestioning preference for mass immigration, a disdain for ordinary British people and a distaste for Britain itself, are knee-jerk prejudices all too often prevelant amongst those who shape our cultural landscape.

“We must challenge at every opportunity this kind of ill-informed, self-hating bigotry.”

UKIP Culture Spokesman Peter Whittle looks at the evolution of acting and film in modern day London in this piece from Standpoint Magazine

Whittle’s London in the new edition of Standpoint looks at the capital on film:

‘Like politics, acting seems yet again to have become dominated by the privately educated, rather than working class boys like Michael Caine or Bob Hoskins’

Lionel Bart’s pre-Oliver! stage hit Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be is currently being revived at the Theatre Royal in the East End. I wonder what London audiences today will make of it. Joan Littlewood, the legendary producer who got the original 1959 production together, was evangelical about the need for working-class actors not only to be seen and heard but to be heard in their original voices, untouched by Rada and its belief that only received pronunciation bestowed the authority required of all real actors. The following decade gave us a slew of famous figures from genuinely working-class origins — Michael Caine and Terence Stamp (pictured), both London boys, became bona fide Hollywood stars — and finally it seemed that working-class actors had broken out of their “character and comedy” ghetto.

That era is as dead as the notion of Swinging London. Like our political class, acting seems yet again to have become dominated by the privately educated. The bullishly agitprop-spouting Littlewood would doubtless be horrified at the way in which economic restraints and the breakdown in social mobility have led to a remarkable rise in solidly public school performers, and she’d be right.

But it’s not the whole story. Of all the changes that have taken place in the capital in the past couple of decades, the gradual disappearance of traditional working-class communities, indeed of working-class identity itself, is the most stark. As an older Lambeth resident says in Michael Collins’s wonderful book about London’s working class, The Likes of Us, “It’s like we were never here.”EastEnders, the BBC’s series of largely working-class life in the modern East End, is little more than a polite fiction.

What this means is that audiences who are still quite versed in, as it were, the more upmarket costume drama aspects of London’s identity will have little familiarity with that group of people who once made up the bulk of its population. No working-class culture, no working-class actors. Fings definitely ain’t wot they used t’be.

Bob Hoskins, who died last month, was born far from the sound of Bow Bells (in Bury St Edmunds) but his popular persona was certainly that of the rough but goodnatured cockney. Again, his voice — superficially threatening yet warm, humorous, even innocent, underneath — must strike younger audiences unfamiliar with London’s past social terrain as exotic, even a bit corny, rather like Dick Van Dyke’s infamous cockney impersonation in Mary Poppins. But it was the kind of voice that surrounded me growing up in the Sixties and Seventies.

Two of Hoskins’s most memorable films, The Long Good Friday, set amid the decay of London’s docklands in the Seventies before gentrification set in, andMona Lisa, in which he played a driver charged with ferrying a high-class call girl, depicted a city which was either in decline or simply hole-in-the-wall seedy. It always seemed particularly hard for London to rise to the occasion on film; its grey tattiness always worked best as the backdrop for a certain sort of clichéd urban grittiness. Too heavy for romance and too parochial for big scale action — it was always more The Sweeney than The French Connection — London only really came into its own as an all-purpose setting for Olden Times. The majestic colonnades of the Royal Naval Hospital, just along the road from me on the banks of the river at Greenwich, have stood in for everything from Tsarist St Petersburg (for Crime and Punishment) to revolutionary Paris (Les Misérables) and been pressed into service for enough movies set in 18th-century Whitehall to give them an identity crisis.

This cinematic treatment of London has certainly changed in the past decade or so, as it has become a different kind of city. It has gone in two distinct directions: there’s the glossy and loved-up oeuvre of Richard Curtis, or the gangster and geezer version, pioneered by Guy Ritchie, which now seems to form a whole sub-genre. Rupert Everett beautifully summed up Curtis when he described him as the Leni Riefenstahl of Blair’s Britain: all liberal sensibility, multicultural harmony and well-meaning posh chaps. When seen from a Notting Hill window, this shiny, happy London — easy in its own skin, as the cliché has it — certainly looks like a great place to be. Less inviting on the other hand but with a new, harsh glamour, the crime-ridden world of movies such as RocknRolla and Layer Cake portrays a city of designer suits, good-looking hard men and billionaire interlopers.

What these pictures of London have in common, however, is a distinct air of self-consciousness. While we might recognise aspects of the city in each, neither version feels genuinely familiar. Few of Curtis’s characters could now afford to inhabit their beloved West London, which, with its acres of empty investment properties, is in danger of becoming a ghost town. And Ritchie’s duckers and divers look increasingly like exercises in masculine nostalgia. Neither Michael Caine nor Bob Hoskins would, I’m sure, feel much at home in either landscape.

I received the following message today from UKIP’s Culture Spokesman and London MEP candidate, Peter Whittle, ahead of Thursday’s EU elections.

With the merchants of doom saying that the UK can’t survive in the modern world outside of the EU, it is worth remembering what the English and our Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish cousins in the UK have achieved and given to the world.

It should also serve as a reminder to those contemplating voting ‘Yes’ for Independence in Scotland how much better off we are working together

The much anticipated book from Sarinder Joshua Daroch is now available to order (See below)

I received the below message earlier, which I am happy to reproduce here.

ENOCH, I AM A BRITISH INDIAN

FROM THE RUPEE TO THE EURO WITH A DOUBLE- HEADED COIN?

The much awaited book, ‘Enoch I am a British Indian’ is now available to order from the publisher directly.

The book will be appearing on Amazon in the next few weeks, however that sales channel will be primarily for the general public. I have sent a number of emails relating to the nature of this book so I am sure most of you will be familiar with it by now, the cost of the book is £8.99.

PUBLISHER DETAILS: The Choir Press, 01452 500016. The very first copies will be ready by mid next week and will be sent out around Thursday or Friday.

Please read the information outlined below to to ascertain what the book is about and the nature of its content.

Thank you

Sarinder Joshua Duroch

Gravesend Author Sarinder Joshua Duroch has written his new book, ‘Enoch I am a British Indian’ has just been released and is available to order from the publisher, The Choir Press is based in Gloucester, 01452 500016. The book will become available on Amazon in the next few weeks. In the meantime the publisher will fulfill orders.

This book has captured international attention, and questions many issues surrounding our EU membership and makes comparisons with Commonwealth immigration and the present EU open door immigration that Britain currently has to endure.

The book examines the failure of multiculturalism and focuses on a unified, patriotic culture as a more positive method of social integration that encompasses a greater sense of belonging to the United Kingdom through an increase in patriotic attitudes, thus creating more cohesion and national pride among our communities.

The author, Sarinder Joshua Duroch focuses on Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech of the sixties and looks at the impact that it has relating to present day immigration, he analyses segments of the speech and relates it to his socialisation process here in Britain. As a British national from Glasgow, Duroch looks at the sectarian divide among indigenous communities and also relates issues like caste discrimination that was imported into the UK from the Indian subcontinent, he examines practices, which are not conducive to the British way of life and makes comparisons between social contrasts that pose a hindrance to social integration.

The book re-ignites the immigration debate in the UK and focuses upon the trends of immigration that have had such a huge impact on the UK. He reaches a common bond with Enoch Powell on certain issues, in particular on the issue of British sovereignty and the EU.

Duroch also looks at the dilution of ethnicity and nationality that has been created by multiculturalism, thus causing confusion to the sense of national belonging among third and fourth generation British nationals.

Personal identity, patriotism and nationalism are highlighted by Duroch, as a British Indian with his vision for Britain and Enoch Powell’s vision for Britain.

After another busy week in the world of politics, I still can’t decide whether our ‘elite’ in the House of Commons are hypocrites, deluded or just think we are so dim that they can get away with saying what they think we want to hear and won’t remember what they have actually done before.

Ed Milliband and the Labour Party on Immigration

First up this week was Labour leader ‘Red Ed’ Milliband talking about immigration.

Fresh from his Damascus conversion on celebrating Englishness a few weeks before (Although still not prepared to give the English their own parliament and therefore equality with the rest of the Union), Mr Milliband confessed that ‘Labour had got it wrong’ on immigration and were now willing to listen to people’s concerns.

Strangely enough, the Blair/Brown Labour governments were not willing to listen for THIRTEEN YEARS when in power – Governments that both Mr Milliband and his older brother were cabinet members of in the later years of those administrations. Indeed, a senior aid was quoted as saying that they were ‘rubbing the right’s noses in diversity’ when the question was raised before, neglecting to mention that those affected most by the open door policy on their day to day lives were the very working class English that the Labour party was set up to represent!

During those thirteen years, the population of the UK rose by nearly three million people according to the ONS (Office of National Statistics) and the government got it spectacularly wrong on the numbers that would come here when the doors were opened to Eastern European countries that had just joined The European Union (EU)

Any attempt to discuss the real issues surrounding mass immigration, notably the strain on services and lack of housing to cope, were dismissed by the ‘left’ wing political parties as being the rantings of ‘racists’ – Remember Gordon Brown during the 2010 General Election branding Rochdale housewife Gillian Duffy a ‘bigoted woman’ for daring to mention the issue?

After Mr Milliband’s speech, Labour’s Immigration spokesman Chris Bryant MP was invited on to the BBC Politics Show to explain what was going on as can be seen in the clip below. I don’t often praise the BBC, but putting him in the same studio as journalist and author Peter Hitchens in a debate on immigration was a very nice touch

Why the change of heart, Ed?

So, do you suppose that this is Mr Milliband’s second Damascene conversion in under a month or a politician playing to the crowd to gain votes?

I strongly suspect it to be the latter – After all, The Conservatives promised to cut immigration to the tens of thousands per year as part of their General Election manifesto two years ago and we have just been presented with the figures for 2010-2011 that showed net immigration at a massive high of 250,000 people, a clear open goal for a party with a commitment to slashing immigration to aim at.

I am also suspicious that this is purely a ruse because the Labour Party remain committed to the EU project, part of which means that you can’t limit immigration from member states. Indeed, the tentacles of the EU have wrapped themselves around our ability to police our own borders and edicts from Brussels not only demand that we give EU citizens access to our country but also to our benefits and health service,increasing the burden on the taxpayer and our overstretched public services in these times of austerity.

Finally, The Labour Party have done very well at the ballot box from immigrant communities, with numerous surveys crediting them with receiving as much as 80% of the vote from those newly enfranchised in our country. The Labour Party spent much of their time in power pandering to various minority groups when they should have been concentrating on integrating these groups in to our society and helping them assimilate in to the wider community.

By constant promotion of ‘multiculturalism’ and condemnation of any who have spoken out against mass immigration as ‘racists’, The Labour Party have alienated many of their core working class voters who they will need to regain power at the next general election. In my opinion, this is not Ed Milliband finally seeing the light on cutting immigration but is merely a crude attempt to win back some of the support that they have undoubtedly lost over the issue. I hope and trust that the electorate will remember who was responsible for this mess in the first place.

David Cameron and The Conservatives on tax avoidance

If Red Ed was trying to make himself look silly this week, he must be mightily upset with Prime Minister David Cameron for stealing his thunder.

When comedian Jimmy Carr was revealed to be using an offshore scheme to avoid paying the full 45% income tax rate on his not inconsiderable earnings, the PM waded in to the row by calling Mr Carr’s arrangements ‘morally repugnant’.

Again, you have to ask yourself the question as to whether this is what Mr Cameron really felt or if he was just grandstanding with a stance he thought would be popular with the voters, especially as the Tories are still seen by many as a party for the ultra rich?

The fallout from his comments have been nothing if not spectacular. It has since been revealed that high profile Conservative donors and supporters such as Sir Philip Green and singer/songwriter Gary Barlow OBE also operate similar schemes, and there have also been allegations that members of Mr Cameron’s own family have not exactly been paying the complete 45% band that their earnings would have you believe they would have to fork out.

Probably the most level headed commentary on this subject that I have seen so far came in the Express from my UKIP colleague, Neil Hamilton (See link below)

My take on the situation is that Mr Carr has acted within the law but has shown himself to be a hypocrite by criticising people in his comedy act who are using schemes to avoid paying tax in a similar way to himself.

Ken Livingstone suffered a similar fate when his tax affairs came to light during the recent GLA elections – He had referred to bankers who used tax avoidance schemes as ‘bastards who should not be allowed to vote’ a few years back, and was then exposed as using a company loophole to pay tax at a much lower rate than the ordinary Londoners he wanted to represent! Let’s face it, as Neil Hamilton states in his article, we all begrudge paying tax and if there was a legal way of keeping down the amount we pay most of us would take it.

Dealing with immigration and tax avoidance

It is pretty obvious that neither the Prime Minister or the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition has any credibility when it comes to dealing with either of these issues. Indeed, the damning response I have heard on the doorsteps when canvassing in elections is that ‘all politicians are the same, they all lie and tell you what you want to hear but do nothing when they get the chance’.

Whilst Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem all give promises and then change their tune for the chance of a few extra votes (Remember Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg promising to scrap student tuition fees in 2010, picture left?), UKIP policy has remained exactly the same on these subjects for years. It has stayed the same because the party believes that the policies in place, often derided by our political opponents, are the right thing to do for our country irrespective of ‘trendy’ think tanks and political expediency.

None of the old parties will ever get a grip on mass immigration because they all support our membership of the EU. Whilst we stay within this vast bureaucratic organisation, we have no power to stop anybody from the other member states coming to the UK. Talk of ‘renegotiating’ our deal with Brussels is unrealistic – There is no mechanism within the Treaty of Lisbon that Gordon Brown signed whilst Prime Minister to repatriate powers to any of the member states, including those regarding border controls.

Our stance on immigration is clear and common sense – Withdraw from the EU to regain border control, place a 5 year freeze on permanent immigration so we can sort out the backlog of cases that the Border Agency has on their desk and afterwards introduce a points based system along the lines of the Australian model so that only those who can support themselves and benefit society as a whole are admitted.

With regards to tax, the current system is far too complicated. A whole industry has sprung up around exploiting loopholes, with HM Revenue having to expend disproportionate resources to try and prosecute tax evasion (Not avoidance, which is legal) and losing a number of cases because nobody seems to know how such laws should be enforced and what they cover.

UKIP would set a flat rate tax that covers all, with the minimum threshold where tax starts to be paid raised to take the lowest paid workers out of contributions altogether. Where low flat rates have been introduced in other countries, many have seen the overall take increase as avoidance schemes become unnecessary and more money is left in people’s pockets to spend, boosting job creation and local business. This has also encouraged investment from companies who can see the advantages of operating within a low tax economy, again creating opportunities for employment.

Not all political parties are the same, and not all party leaders change their tune to suit their own agendas. UKIP have been consistent even when our message has not been as popular as it is now. On tax, the message is simple – Vote for real change, don’t be left with just loose change.